GamesRadar recently posted a preview of the long-awaited RPG/Strategy game, Republic: The Revolution. Republic is billed as a less violent Deus Ex, except that instead of uncovering conspiracies, you are out to take over the land of Novistrana by becoming President.

This game's goal can be achieved in a variety of ways, from diplomatic solutions, to down-and-dirty mob hits. Republic also has some role-playing themes to it, mostly pertaining to your character. You make your character using a psychometric test, and based on your personality, points are distributed into presence, control, charisma, and power. From here, you use your party's resources to gain popularity and eventually oust the current President of Novistrana.

Here's an excerpt from the preview:

The real fun of the game lies in getting your characters to carry out actions to further your cause. Each character is allotted three slots of time for each day. You can have them carry out actions for two of those slots but one slot is always left for their free time, where they go off and do whatever they want (more on this later).

There are 180 different actions in the game that cover the whole gamut of manipulation and control, from simple bribes, leaking damaging info to the press, assassinations to organising a peace rally or an army recruitment day. Each action has three levels of power, obviously the higher the level, the greater its likelihood of success. Characters can have a max of six to nine actions each.

The easiest way to see how this works is to take a real example. In your action planner (a diary of given tasks) you choose a character suitable for the job at hand. We’ll take a force character and send him on an errand to intimidate a person to join our faction. The action ‘terrorise’ is chosen, along with our target and location.